Children who don’t get a pre-kindergarten education, ideally from birth to age 5, might fall behind and “may as well drop out” by third grade, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said on Wednesday at an event to garner support for President Barack Obama's $75-billion proposal to increase pre-school enrollment across the country.

The administration's plan would use federal money to pay for preschool for families making up to twice the federal poverty level, and would give states incentives to provide more public pre-school spots for middle-income families, and to provide full-day kindergarten.

President Obama went to Georgia to push his State of the Union proposal to work with the states "to make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America." He cited a statistic from the National Institute for Early Education Research that "fewer than three in 10" 4-year-olds are enrolled in this vital early education program. Just how vital was summed up in three charts from the White House. One of them I showed you yesterday. At-risk children who don't go to preschool are 25 percent more likely to drop out of school, 60 percent more likely not to attend...

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama proposed “working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America.” This additional preschool access would, of course, be funded through federal and state coffers. President Obama is headed to Georgia today to “formally unveil his proposal for expanding early childhood education,” reports the Washington Post. You can read the President’s proposal here. It calls for a state-federal partnership guaranteeing that all 4-year olds at families at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line receive access to preschool, as well as entails a “massively expanded...

Obama to push universal preschool proposal By Rachel Rose Hartman, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 1 hr 28 mins ago Two days after his State of the Union pledge to guarantee high quality preschool for every 4-year-old in the U.S., President Barack Obama takes his pitch on the road on Thursday to an Atlanta suburb where he will deliver a speech on the issue at a local recreation center. Obama cast his preschool plan as a way to bring low-income and minority children up to speed with higher-income children—a move he says would save taxpayer money and give those...

Mission: PreK Bethany Stotts, December 14, 2009 Last month a prestigious line-up of retired admirals and generals emphasized the importance of early childhood education to the America’s continued national security. “We know that early learning is a proven way to save scarce taxpayer dollars while laying the foundation for success of the next generation of Americans,” said Retired Major General James W. Comstock at the conference, which was opened by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “That is why the Early Learning Challenge Fund is so important,” continued the former. As part of the student loan bill, the Fund would provide...